


Homecoming

by GryfoTheGreat



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Gen, Motherhood, Pregnancy, Sharing a Bed, Siblings, ben is a fetus, han just wants to go back to sleep, leia is a workholic, luke is old-fashioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-08-10 11:58:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7844026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GryfoTheGreat/pseuds/GryfoTheGreat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To nobody's surprise, it turns out that workaholic rebels aren’t great at the whole family thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Homecoming

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place post-RotJ.
> 
> I think a lot about Leia and Han not being great parents to Ben, and I wanted to examine that from Leia’s perspective, but then Luke happened because Skywalkers.

It’s three in the morning and Chief of State Leia Organa is still awake.

She stares blearily at the demilitarisation reports. She understands what Mon Mothma intends - dismantling the Alliance's standing army in favour of each word forming its own is not only good practice in peacetime but is also a gesture of good faith to the more uncertain worlds - but as much effort as it took to build their fleet… It is much, much harder to tear it apart. This commander comes from this world - but he has married someone from across the galaxy. Where will she assign him? This battalion is technically not under her command - will they appreciate her telling them to lay down their arms? What of those who have to home to return to, like her? Where will they flee to? Coruscant? Corellia? Naboo? What world would have the infrastructure to support an influx of newly unemployed soldiers?

She drops her head into her hands, and, as if feeling her distress, the child twists in her belly. They - she and Han have agreed not to learn anything about them until the day they're born - aren’t quite big enough to kick yet, the only evidence of their existence the faint swell of her stomach. She dreads the day she begins to show properly.

(Her mother died in childbirth, only living long enough to name her twins. Leia knows it is silly of her to be afraid - that her mother was dying anyway, the fall of both her democracy and her husband too much to bear on top of said husband strangling her - but. Still.

She dreams about it sometimes - her mother’s face streaked with tears, her breath rattling, those intelligent brown eyes sliding shut...)

She stands, swearing as her spine cracks. She loathes desk work with a passion, but the leaders of the New Republic had heard _baby_ and basically decommissioned her on the spot, on the grounds that Bail Organa would have had them court-martialled if he heard they were forcing his pregnant daughter to work. She would much rather be on the ground than in the sky, helping the New Republic stabilise peace’s tenuous grip on the galaxy… But any work, even paperwork, is better than no work.

Leia has spent every day since she was sixteen fighting, both figuratively and metaphorically. She doesn’t know how to stop.

She stares at the holoscreens surrounding her, trying to decide between a large cup of caff and more reports or her husband’s warm, if slightly smelly, embrace. General Han Solo is currently fast asleep in their - well, not their _marriage_ bed, they haven’t quite gotten around to that yet, but their bed. He spent the day with his ‘two ladies’ (his words, not hers), tuning up the Falcon’s catalytic scrubber and nagging her like an old wife. She tried to eat some soft nerf cheese and he actually shot it out of her hand. There is a blaster hole in one of the benches in the mess to prove it.

The decision is eventually made not by her, but for her. A loud crash shakes the door, heralded by a drawn-out, high pitched beep, at the same time she feels that tug at her navel that says _Luke_. (In her sleep-deprived state, she wonders if it was because they were once joined there, which is honestly the weirdest thing she has realised in several months, including, y’know, the fact that she’s pregnant with Han Solo’s kid and that her father was a Sith Lord and she might be a _Jedi_.)

She stops thinking, then, because R2-D2 rolls into her hall, followed by his master, who promptly collapses on the floor.

“Luke?” Her brother, predictably, does not respond. “Luke!” She slaps his cheek, and he doesn’t respond - only turns over and snores into the lino.

“Leia?” There’s Han - blaster drawn, of course, what else - mostly dressed. Apparently his modesty was more important than his wife's safety. “Is that-?”

“My itinerant brother who I haven't seen in three months?” She presses her ear to his chest - no, his heart is fine, compared to hers, which is racing. “Yes.”

Han squints, makes a noise that sounds like Shyriiwook but might just be him grumbling, and says; “Well, you Skywalkers sure have that dramatic entrance thing down.” R2-D2 beeps in agreement.

“I thought he was _dead,_ ” she hisses. Her hand is still pressed to Luke’s chest - if she concentrates she can feel her heartbeat ebbing, slowly, until they are beating the same rhythm. She can sense him again - like the evening sunlight back on Yavin, bright enough to shine even through her closed eyelids.

“Well? Are you going to leave him on the floor?” Han stoops down beside her and begins the process of hauling him up. “He’s lost weight.”

Leia stands up to try to help, but Han jerks her brother away. She sighs, and R2-D2 beeps in a way that sounds uncannily like laughter. “Here, you bucket of bolts. Let’s put you to bed first.” She guides the astromech onto the charging pad, and it lets out a soft, happy noise as it powers down, its eye pulsing orange.

That’s one of their unexpected guests taken care of… but what of the other? She can’t leave him on the floor, there are no spare bunks anywhere on the star cruiser - she knows, she allocated them all - and the tiny couch in the main room wouldn’t sleep an Ewok.

Han gives her that look, mouth tilted sideways and eyebrows raised, and says; “I’m putting him in our bed. C’mon.”

With that he grabs Leia’s wrist and, ignoring her protestations, drags her to their room.

 

Leia wakes up to her brother falling out of bed.

Luckily, it wakes him up too. He sits up, rubbing his head and looking around in resigned confusion, like he’s used to waking up in strange places after blacking out.

He sees her and blinks. “Oh. I thought I felt you.”

“ _Felt_ \- ” she starts, and then cuts herself off. Her brothers Weird Jedi Skills are not important right now. “Where were you? I thought you were _dead_! You never even sent me so much as a ping!”

“I did,” he frowns. “I sent you an e-mail every week, but you never replied. I was in the Pelgrin sector.”

“Oh.” Communications with Pelgrin have been spotty at best, lately. If Luke was in an area with little reception (and knowing him, he was off gallivanting in the deepest recesses of the system) nothing would’ve gotten through. “Didn’t you think something suspicious was up when you never got an answer.”

“Figured you were busy,” Luke says simply. “With the Republic, and all.” He gestures vaguely at her stomach.

“You – you know?” She presses her hands to her belly, which is still flat enough to pass unnoticed under her baggy clothing.

“Of course.” He closes his eyes, and she feels the ripple of the Force run through her, like a stone dropping into a puddle. “Feels different up close. More like Han than you. Wait - ” His eyes snap open and he leaps up unsteadily. “Is that Han?”

“Hey, kid.” Han waves lazily. “Sleep well?”

Luke gapes. Leia thinks, tiredly, that he does that an awful lot.

“You collapsed on our floor.” Han stretches. “We couldn’t leave you there.”

“His idea,” Leia says drily.

Luke squints at them. “You’re not wearing a ring!” he says, scandalised.

“Not this again,” Leia begins. She’s dealt with enough of this from the old madames of Coruscant, she doesn’t need it from her backwater brother too.

 Han cuts in indignantly. “I’m getting there! True love takes time! Leia won’t let me take a day off to do it!”

“He’ll be born out of wedlock!” Luke says accusingly.

Han pauses. “He?”

Leia looks down, and, well, now that she really thinks about it –

“Didn’t you ask the doctor?”

“No,” Leia says softly, looking into her brother’s blue, blue eyes, just like their father’s must have been, before. “But you’re right. I know.” Han presses a hand again her back. Leia breathes in a steadying breath. “Come on, you layabouts. We’ve got work to do. Han, you’ve got a briefing with Lando at noon. Luke, you’re coming with me to the Senate to see Mon Mothma and give us an update on Pelgrin.”

Both her boys groan, and Leia only laughs as the child – he, she tells herself, he – kicks at her, impatient for her to get to work.


End file.
